THE President is in a fighting mood these days. He trounced the Tories at Atlanta. He trounced the Tories in his annual message. He trounced the Tories at the Jackson Day dinner. Nevertheless, the poor Tories, though trounced, continue to be well fed. As much cannot be said of the unemployed.
At Atlanta Mr. Roosevelt thought it "of interest to point out that national surveys prove that the average of our citizenship lives today on what would be called by the medical fraternity a third-class diet. If the country lived on a second class diet we would need to put many more acres than we use today back into the production of foodstuffs for domestic consumption. If the nation lived on a first-class diet we would have to put more acres than we ever cultivated into the production of an additional supply of things for Americans to eat. Why, speaking in broad terms in following up this particular illustration, are we living on a third-class diet? For the very simple reason that the masses of the American people have not got the purchasing power to eat more and better food." Speaking in narrow terms it might also be said that millions of Americans are living on a third-, fourth-, and fifth-class diet because Mr. Roosevelt--for all his Tory-trouncing--insists on cutting relief.
Mr. Roosevelt grew even more eloquent on the subject in his annual message to Congress. "Shall we say," he asked, "to the several millions of unemployed citizens who face the very problem of existence--yes, of getting enough to eat: 'We will withdraw from giving you work, we will turn you back to the charity of your communities and to those men of selfish power who tell you that perhaps they will employ you if the government leaves them strictly alone'?" The answer is that it has now been Mr. Roosevelt's policy for some time to get the federal government out of relief as quickly as possible and in fact to turn "several millions of unemployed citizens who face the very problem of existence -yes, of getting enough to eat"-back on the charity of their communities.
While the President at Atlanta was denouncing "gentlemen in well-warmed and well-stocked clubs" and spreading himself on the subject of third-class diets, relief administrators in the District of Columbia cut families on relief down to a fourth-class diet. An order was issued reducing all relief allowances 25 per cent. The Washington, D. C., average will now be $22.50 a month per family. At about the same time, too, Secretary Wallace was asking in a radio speech, "How can you feed and clothe and maintain the health of a family of four or five properly on $15 or $20 a week?" "The answer," Secretary Wallace said, "is that you can't." District of Columbia jobless may find it difficult to appreciate the unconscious humor in this or in the fact that in November, when the federal government began to cut relief, a New York Times tabulation showed that dividends reached their highest total since June, 1931.
The condition of the unemployed is of little interest to the larger part of the American press. A small group of liberal papers pays some attention to their problems. The Hearst press supplies us with such stories as the recent one published in the New York American under the heading, "Give Us More! More! Demand Those on Relief; Mostly Foreigners, Says Bullard." The rest is silence. But from stray items and from the Federated Press, a labor news service, it is possible to put together a picture of the plight of those on the relief rolls.
Here are some glimpses of relief conditions in the country, covering conditions during the past few months:
Allentown, Pennsylvania. Members of the Inter-County Unemployed and Works Division will not dine on turkey Thanksgiving day--or even corned beef; they will be on picket duty all week before local relief offices in Berks, Lehigh, Lancaster, and York counties, protesting against the discontinuance of relief.
Austin, Texas So many people were thrown off relief last fall "to pick cotton," and never reinstated, that C. E. Wayman, district WPA administrator, complains there are not enough employables left on the rolls to carry on county highway improvements with full man power.
New York City. "Everybody will have a Thanksgiving dinner," the Emergency Relief Bureau announced, but Thanksgiving came and went and everybody didn't. Among those who didn't were the 100,000 human beings represented by 28,000 piled-up relief applications which the bureau's overworked staff has not yet had time to investigate.
Boston (AP). A complaint that payment of a "coolie" wage by the WPA was directly responsible for lowering wage scales of professional and technical workers in and near Boston was made to the state WPA today. A complete investigation was asked, six specific cases being named of alleged "chiseling" among private employers using the WPA wage scale as an excuse for reducing wages.
Phoenix, Arizona. Two more workers have been deported to Mexico as an aftermath of a Phoenix relief workers' strike when police and thugs charged pickets with clubs and tear gas, injuring fifty. The two men, Jose Flores and Jose P. Barcenas, who bring the total number of deportees to seven, were charged with being Communists. Felony charges are still standing against twenty workers who participated in the strike.
Newport, Kentucky (UP). Enraged because they had not been paid, 200 WPA workers raided a federal relief warehouse here today and seized 100 bags of flour and other articles before they were dispersed by police.
New Orleans (FP). The tapering-off process preparatory to "quitting this business of relief" is already bearing fruit in New Orleans. Eva Killian, twenty-nine, was declared by physicians to be starving to death when brought by an ambulance to a charity hospital here. She had been living on coffee and bread. A child who fainted at school was found to have been without food for twenty-six hours. A woman and four children were found hiding in an empty house. An aged woman and her fourteen-year-old grand daughter, found rummaging in the scrap heaps behind grocery stores, are but two of hundreds engaged in similar searches.
Chicago (FP). Single men on relief will not have to starve and freeze this winter, the emergency relief commission announces. They will have a chance to enter work camps. "In return for their work they receive sustenance plus one dollar a week in wages," the announcement says.
Newburgh, New York (Special to the New York Herald Tribune). About 300 WPA employees who have received no pay since December 14 assembled this morning at the City Hall to see what was wrong. They received only about half the pay they expected on December 14.
Vancouver, Washington (FP). A decision that WPA workers are not relief recipients or indigents has been handed down by Washington WPA officials. While at first sight the decision would seem to be in favor of the workers, the real effect of the ruling is to deprive the WPA workers of free medicine, medical aid, and hospital service from the county. The workers are supposed to furnish these items from their meager WPA wages, "just the same as other wage-earners do."
Austin, Texas (FP). Texas relief clients face the prospect of living on half-rations until February. After February there may be no rations at all. County relief administrators have received $375,000 for December, and the state is asking for $500,000 more in federal funds to keep relief up even to its customarily low Southern level. There is little prospect that the added amount will be forthcoming. No provision for the continuance of the state relief system in any form after February was made at the recent legislative session.
Des Moines, Iowa (FP). Calling the $40 a month paid WPA workers in sixty-six of Iowa's ninety-nine counties a "starvation wage," 300 labor and unemployed delegates, meeting under the chairmanship of President J. C. Lewis of the state federation of labor, called for a statewide strike January 2 for the prevailing scale of wages. The strike would affect nearly 30,000 workers. Toledo (FP). The relief crisis is acute in Toledo, as funds appropriated by the state legislature face exhaustion before the middle of the month. Wholesalers have announced they will cut off credit for relief supplies.
Sioux Falls, South Dakota (FP). When South Dakota WPA workers recently demanded increases in wages which were frequently lower than direct relief had been, WPA Administrator M. A. Kennedy issued a statement charging them with "laziness" and threatening arrests. A week later he was all smiles and good-will as he announced an average raise of $8 a month. What changed his tune was that the Workers' Alliance lined up the trade unions, the Sioux Falls Ministerial Association, and various civic groups in Support of the jobless, and Kennedy quickly found it possible to get South Dakota raised from a Class 2 to a Class I state, thus bringing in the higher wage scale.
Boston (FP). Unless the "relief-roll-preferential" system of hiring is abolished, members of local unions affiliated with the Boston Building Trades Council will be barred from transferring from ERA and WPA projects to contract work. The move is designed to protect the incomes of building-trades workers not on relief rolls.
St. Louis (FP). WPA workers, already harassed by the difficulties of providing food and clothing for their families on $55 a month, are facing the prospect of living in the damp cellars of the city's most run-down buildings. The city's real-estate exchange, in a move almost tantamount to boycott, has advised its members not to lease property to WPA workers on the ground that their wages do not permit their paying rent.
Globe, Arizona (FP). Ten cents a day for food, clothing, and shelter; this is vi-hat Arizona's December allocation of $2,294 for relief in Gila County works out to when divided among 700 persons on the dole. The end of federal relief is causing untold misery.
And now one last look it what has been going on in the President's own backyard while he has been trouncing the Tories:
Washington (FP). With relief cut 25 per cent on account of stoppage of federal funds, slow starvation is already gripping many jobless in the District of Columbia, case workers report. One relief office has received three letters in a week from clinic doctors who say that relief patients sent to them don't need medicine, "they need food."
Leroy Halbert, District relief statistician, estimates that of 14,984 persons certified for WPA jobs, 2,500 will receive less each month on the "security wage" than they have been getting on direct relief.
